THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER. 125 



his purpose, or arrested his onward march. With sin- 

 gular versatility he adapts himself to all outward cir- 

 cumstances ; as occasion requires, he combines with 

 his warlike profession the labors of the husbandman, 

 the fisher, the herdsman, and the trader, and readily 

 abandons one character to adopt the other whenever 

 it may be needful. It is not only at the point of the 

 lance he has subdued the wild inhabitants of so large 

 a portion of the globe ; but by his wonderful facility 

 of adapting himself to the customs of the wilderness, 

 and establishing a commercial intercourse with its 

 fiercest hordes. It required a mixture of the reck- 

 less and wandering spirit of the sons of Ishmael, 

 with the intense love of gain peculiar to the children 

 of Israel, both of which his character exhibits, to 

 form the wandering merchant, who could trade and 

 defend his merchandise, and who would penetrate, to 

 effect his purpose, a thousand miles away from his 

 station, either towards the hyperborean regions, or 

 through the parched plains of the naked Steppes. 



A Russian Tsar might speedily collect from 

 amongst this people a larger and more formidable 

 force of cavalry than the whole of united Europe 

 could bring together ; and in all the regular cavalry 

 of the Russian line, there never was a horseman, 

 however laboriously drilled, whom the untutored 

 Cossack would not charge, wheel round, and over 

 come, though armed cap-a-pie, with his mere nagaica, 



